Q&A: What is the difference between Palestine and the USA?
What is the difference between Palestine and the USA?
Question
One of the pro-Israel propaganda arguments is that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” and that it is an “invention.”
My question is: isn’t that something that can be said about every nation, nationality, and state? After all, all of them as national groups are nothing more than part of the shared human imagination. And what difference does it make whether it is 70 years old or 2,000?
In other words: what exactly is the United States? A collection of European immigrants (and aggressive ones). Can one deny Americans their right to their land because “there is no such thing as an American people”?!
You are not the one who presented this popular argument, but in any case I am turning to you as someone with an excellent ability to analyze concepts and arguments.
Do you see the difference? Between Palestine and the USA in this respect?
(I am not speaking about Israel, since God made us His people, so the Jewish people have a different meaning from the other random nations.)
Answer
I definitely do see a difference. I have written more than once that the Palestinian people are the most extreme example of the approach of imagined communities, which sees a people as a completely subjective definition that does not have to meet any test whatsoever. First of all, time. Beyond that, the Americans were constituted around the Constitution and the values of democracy and freedom. There are very clear American values. Among the Palestinians, the only essential common characteristic they have is the desire to throw us into the sea (and also their “brothers” who belong to other parties—Hamas versus Fatah, etc.). Oh, and there are also lots of pseudo-historical fantasies as well (successors of the Philistines, etc.). It is an imagined community that could serve as an archetype in political science for this concept.
Discussion on Answer
I understood what you wanted to argue, and I wrote that I do not agree.
The fact that some concept is defined by an open-ended definition does not mean it is subjective. Try defining the concept of “quality,” for example (as in Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). You will not succeed. Does that mean the concept does not exist or that it is subjective? In my opinion, absolutely not. In medical diagnosis as well, and even more so in psychiatric diagnosis, there are illnesses that are defined by a list of ten characteristics, for example, such that if six of them are present then you have that illness. Does that mean the illness is subjective or imaginary? Definitions are quite a limited tool, and they do not really succeed in capturing reality.
Nationality or a people have an open-ended definition. But the Palestinians really do not satisfy it. It is true that in other peoples as well only some of the characteristics are present, and not even in every individual within the people, and still this is an open-ended definition for an existing concept. The problem with the postmodernists and the rest of the proponents of the “new criticism” is that for them, anything that is not sharply defined or directly observed does not exist. Anything that is not certain is subjective. They are the direct heirs of the logical positivists.
See my remarks in column 338 about Shlomo Sand, who brought this subjectivist thesis to absurd conclusions. And also in my article “Suddenly a Man Arises,” which is linked there: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%96%D7%94%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%96%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%A0%D7%95-%D7%95%D7%91%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%9C/
“This approach of imagined communities that sees a people as a definition”—that can be said about every nation and nationality.
The Swedes decided they are Swedes and not Norwegians, because why? Because that’s what imagination and agreement decided.
“Subjective”—because people do not recognize them. Let us kindly recognize them, and then they will no longer be like that. By a decision, it becomes objective.
“Among the Palestinians the main characteristic is to throw us into the sea; they have no constitution”—some of them do, and some of them do not.
Once you recognize them, they will also have a constitution, a flag, and whatever you want.
Again, with one decision, it becomes that way.
Personally, I oppose a Palestinian state, and I even think it would be dangerous (I do indeed agree with the argument that they want to throw us into the sea).
But all in all, I just wanted to emphasize that the argument about their imagined nationality is not relevant, in light of the fact that all of us are like that. And time? How is that relevant? Is this a competition over who has a richer history as a nation?